Why Taylor Swift shocked everyone — even Swifties — by endorsing Kamala Harris

Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president — and it’s a decisive move that has shocked even the Swifties who feel they know the popstar best.
On one hand, it’s been coming ever since vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance derided the “childless cat ladies” he said are running (and apparently ruining) the United States. Both a noted cat lover and a person who doesn’t have children, Swift was practically goaded into entering the fray.
She signed off her endorsement announcement on social media, which went live just after last night’s presidential debate between Harris and Donald Trump, as “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” a razor-sharp clapback.
That she accompanied the statement with an image from her 2023 “Time Person of the Year” cover shoot, in which she’s draped in the youngest of her three cats, to is a not-so-subtle reminder of the power and influence she wields.
It’s not news that Swift is no fan of Donald Trump: In 2020, she sent a tweet accusing him of “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism,” and later called out his “ineffective leadership” and said he was trying to “subvert and destroy our right to vote.”
It’s also not surprising that Swift admires Kamala Harris: She effectively endorsed Biden and Harris’ bid for the White House in 2020, saying in an interview with V magazine that “the change we need most is to elect a president who recognizes that people of color deserve to feel safe and represented, that women deserve the right to choose, and that the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be acknowledged and included.” Similarly, in 2018, Swift urged her followers to vote against Tennessee senate candidate Marsha Blackburn on the grounds of her anti-LGBTQ views. 
Still, this kind of full-throated, explicit endorsement for a presidential candidate from a popstar who usually just sticks to telling people to register to vote is unexpected, to say the least.
Swift’s Harris endorsement still shies away from allegiance to a specific party, and cites the “research” she’s done into the Democratic hopeful’s policies. “She fights for rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” she writes. And she gave a good reason as to why she felt compelled to “be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter”: She said she was spurred to action after AI images of her endorsing Trump began circulating, to the point where the Republican candidate himself re-posted them with the caption, “I accept!”
Until 2018, Swift was deliberately apolitical. “I don’t talk about politics because it might influence other people,” she told Time in 2012. “And I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.” (At the time, she was 22.) During the 2016 U.S. election, she was criticized for not endorsing Hillary Clinton, and responded by telling Vogue that she didn’t because Trump had “weaponized the idea of celebrity” and “I just knew I wasn’t going to help.”
In fact, there’s long-term lore that Swift might harbour Republican sympathies. Just last week, certain corners speculated that she was “Team Trump” after she was spotted hugging Brittany Mahomes, a fellow NFL WAG (wives and girlfriends). Days earlier, Mahomes had been accused of MAGA-allegiance because Trump thanked her for “strongly defending me” after she liked one of his social media posts. (She’s apparently since unliked it.)
The stakes of Swift weighing in on this election are high. She has made no secret of her ambition to be the biggest pop star she can possibly be, giving her good reason to shy away from saying anything that might alienate people. As an entertainer who came up in the traditionally conservative country music industry and whose fan base is now so large that it must encompass fans of every political stripe, throwing her oar in for Harris, and by extension the Democrats, could be bad for business. Swift is a billionaire, and you don’t become a billionaire by accident.
An endorsement like this, amidst high local and global political tensions, carries an added level of danger for someone who is known to be a target. Just a few weeks ago, her concerts in Vienna were cancelled after authorities uncovered a terror plot targeting her and her fans. It’s a familiar fear: In 2018, when she was debating speaking out against Blackburn, her team, including her father, were shown cautioning her against it in the documentary Miss Americana, citing safety concerns.
What is not surprising to Swifties, however, is the timing of Swift choosing to speak up in an unprecedented way. Tonight, Swift will attend the VMA awards, 15 years since the infamous incident when Swift, while on stage to accept an award at the same show, was interrupted by now-Trump-supporter Kanye West, who told her she didn’t deserve to win.
She was silent then. But she isn’t now.